Prologue #2
Uncle Nash chuckles. “You mean with Evelyn?” He grins. “Yeah, that one cost me a pretty penny. Was she worth it?”
I shift on the couch, the leather creaking. I don’t want to talk about this. “She was nice.”
I immediately know it was the wrong thing to say, because Uncle Nash howls with laughter, throwing his head back and kicking his legs against the footrest. “Nice?” He squawks. “You fucked a thousand-dollar whore and all you can say is that she was nice?”
I squeeze my whiskey glass and look down at my lap. “Can I go upstairs now?” I say darkly.
“Why? So you can jack off?”
I jerk my head up. Uncle Nash grins cruelly at me. His glass is already empty.
“No.” I say it too quickly. Too defensively.
“I don’t understand you, Rowan.” He shakes his head and jumps out of the chair and walks back over to the wet bar.
I watch him the whole time, stalking him like he’s one of the many targets he’s given me since my first kill when I was thirteen years old.
“You know how many boys your age would kill to fuck someone like Evelyn Landry?”
I remember how Evelyn slid the straps of her dress off her shoulders in front of the open window facing the ocean.
We’d been at the hotel, not here, the way it always is when Uncle Nash gets me a woman.
But all I could think about as I watched her undress was Abilene.
How Abilene’s bare skin would look under the full moonlight, how Abilene would move through the salt-kissed air as she walked up to me, waiting for her on the bed.
“Your own personal porn star,” Uncle Nash continues, walking back over to his chair with another glass of whiskey, this one much fuller than the first. “And you didn’t even appreciate it.”
The living room is cavernous, but it feels like the walls are squeezing in around me. Uncle Nash is too close, and I swear I can hear his body working. His blood beating, his lungs expanding. It’s too much noise.
I want silence.
“What do you want from me?” he asks, settling back down in his chair. “I reward you for your work, just like I do everyone else under my employ.”
He’s talking about Evelyn. He’s never paid me anything. I’m his personal guard dog, one he raised from a puppy to be loyal to him.
“I know.” Uncle Nash snaps his fingers, like he’s just had a revelation. He leans forward, his eyes boring into mine. As much as he’s acting like this is some genial, friendly celebration, the menace is more than clear. “It’s that girl that you want, isn’t it?”
Every atom in my body lights up.
“Abilene Snow.” Uncle Nash rolls her name around on his tongue, and I want to rip it out. He doesn’t deserve to say her name. “Pretty enough. Too big for my tastes, though.”
I stare at him, trembling. Now it’s my own blood I hear rushing through my veins, boiling for a—
For a kill.
“What is it about her?” He leans forward in his chair.
I’m perfectly still, clutching my undrunk whiskey in one hand, watching him like I watch a target.
Uncle Nash’s eyes glint with a hard, knowing cruelty.
“It’s because you’ve heard the rumors, isn’t it?
” He grins the way he does whenever he’s watching me punish someone for him. “You think she’s like you?”
My ears buzz. I squeeze the whiskey glass, targeting all my hot, concentrated rage into my fist in hopes that Uncle Nash won’t see how upset I am. Because if he knows I’m upset, he’ll use it against me.
“That is it.” Uncle Nash laughs with a cruel delight. “You think because everyone says she killed that football player that she’ll be okay with you? With what you are?”
I suck in my breath, all my senses zeroed in on Uncle Nash. I can see his blood pumping through his neck. A target. He’s a target.
“Oh, Rowan, Rowan, Rowan.” He says my name like I’m a little baby, too young to know anything. “You can’t listen to rumors. That boy’s death was an accident. Abilene Snow isn’t going to love you.” His eyes glint. “Just like your mother couldn’t love you.”
The whiskey glass explodes in my hand, glass and alcohol exploding outward like a star. A hunk of glass embeds in my palm, the pain electrifying me. Uncle Nash jumps.
And, just for a second, fear flickers across his face.
That fear catches on something inside me. The part of me that’s broken. The part of me that isn’t just a killer but loves killing. The part of me that, no matter how much I tell myself otherwise, would destroy Abilene Snow if I ever got too close to her.
Just like I’m going to destroy Uncle Nash.
It happens fast. Faster than it usually does. I leap to my feet and then slam into Uncle Nash, so hard that the chair tilts back and we both fly backward. At the same time, I swipe the glass still trapped in my palm across his throat, severing that vein I could feel pumping across the room.
His blood gushes out like a fountain, drenching my face in heat and life. But that’s nothing compared to his confused, betrayed expression, to the satisfying way he opens and closes his mouth like a dying fish as he stares up at me.
My name. He’s trying to say my name. But I think I’ve severed his vocal cords. I snapped something when I sliced his throat, and I can see it wriggling as he works his jaw.
I stand up and pull the glass out of my palm and toss it aside. My cock is uncomfortably hard from all the blood, and I wonder if Uncle Nash sees it, how much I like finally murdering him after ten years.
I’ve wanted to do this since I was eight fucking years old. Since I came to live here after my mother told me she never wanted to see me again.
Uncle Nash makes a wet rattling sound, the last of his breath escaping from his body. I’m acting on instinct now. Instinct and training. I pick him up, so taut with adrenaline that it’s like he weighs nothing.
Then I hurl him through the big picture window that looks out at his pristine swimming pool and professionally landscaped yard. Like Bobby Spencer, Uncle Nash will die from a terrible accident. He was drinking. He slipped and fell through the glass.
And now, after a decade of his abuse, I’m finally free.